Skills for the Future

When businesses don’t invest in training up and developing the skills of their workforce, everybody loses. It means lower productivity and fewer opportunities to progress and climb the ladder. It means the ‘Great Resignation’ continuing and ‘levelling up’ stalling. But where is the UK currently at when it comes to adult reskilling? And, as important, what does the future hold and how do we get there?

A report from the Learning and Work Institute provides a stark reminder of where we are. Employers across the UK are investing less and less in training. Their data analysis (from 2005 onwards) found a 28% decline in the amount of money being invested per employee in work-based training.

Not only is the UK slipping behind in terms of employee investment, but the gap between the UK and Europe is getting wider too. Businesses in Europe now invest twice as much in training as businesses in the UK.

From international competitiveness to productivity, the ongoing retention challenge to job satisfaction, a lack of investment in training has huge implications across each and every one of these areas.

The Learning and Work Institute’s findings aren’t a one-off either. Recently, Emeritus – the global education technology company that provides online courses in collaboration with more than 60 world-class universities around the globe – revealed new analysis about adult skills gaps in The Times. It showed huge geographical disparities across the UK in the qualification levels of adults, with the data suggesting it would take more than a generation to close these gaps. In parts of the north of England, it would take more than 30 years for their level of adult skills to match London’s.

I lead Emeritus’ work in the UK and Europe, and I speak with businesses daily about these challenges. For some, the challenge comes from cost pressures. For others, it’s a fear of the unknown – knowing that fast-paced technological and industry changes are coming, but not knowing how best to react and support their workforce. The eternal dichotomy is an acceptance that skills gaps exist, while investment in remedying this dwindles.

While the pandemic curtailed training offerings for many businesses entirely, too many also cut their programmes back to the bare bones with tick-box short courses about health and safety replacing more in-depth programmes that genuinely upskill their employees.

What does the future look like for skills?

While it’s easy to be despondent, there is cause for optimism about the future of reskilling. Last week, I hosted an event with Steve Suarez, the Global Head of Innovation, Global Functions at HSBC. He spoke passionately about why businesses must invest in employee training programmes.

In part, he made the personal case for upskilling. He spoke about his own background at the bank, leading teams to create a culture of innovation across the bank’s 230,000 strong global workforce. Each of those individuals has the capacity to innovate and transform how they deliver in their roles. But to do this they need to love their job. Be engaged. Grow in their roles. The surest way to achieve this is to keep learning and developing. If people aren’t learning, the chances are they will move on to another role where they can.

But he also argued the employer case. Paraphrasing the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he reminded us that the context businesses operate in is constantly changing: ‘The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again’.

To keep up with that level of pace, a major investment in upskilling is essential. As new processes are introduced to catch up with new technologies, or new sectors and industries emerge to tackle new threats and opportunities, businesses need their workforce to learn from the best and the brightest or they will fall behind and lose their competitive edge.

It is expensive for businesses to lose great talent, and far cheaper to train and retain them. Businesses are always looking for innovation, and that comes from making your in-house experts even more curious and even more engaged. Training and adult skill development is the key route to making that happen.